While we’re talking about exposed body parts here, witness the following comments, part of a speech by FCC Chair Michael Powell to the National Association of Broadcasters:

It is not Janet’s nudity that is decried. It is the fact that “by god it was the Superbowl!” the largest prime television event of the year. An event for friends and family. People do not want to feel that they can be struck by lightning, or hit by a truck at any moment. Similarly, they do not like the sense they have no safe expectation of what they might see or hear during a given program—precisely the formula some are using to grab headlines.

In that one well-worded paragraph, Mr. Powell has summarized the reason for the general banality of North American popular culture.

The Hollywood Reporter sets out an even more bizarre tableau:

Democratic FCC commissioner Michael Copps has been the leading champion on the indecency front for years. If the Bono decision was intended to clarify the indecency regulations, it didn’t help. While the commission’s top mass media advisors at first told conventioneers that the “fuck” ruling was radioactive, they backed off when asked for specifics.

“They shouldn’t be saying the F-word. They should be taking precautions. If it’s a slip-up, I’m not sure that means it isn’t a violation,” said Catherine Bohigian, legal adviser to Commissioner Kevin Martin. “Do you really need to say the F-word before 10 o’ clock?”

But when asked if airing “Schindler’s List,” “Saving Private Ryan,” an interview with mobster John Gotti or the airing of a French documentary that followed New York City firefighters during 9/11, where the word “fuck” was used extensively, would merit a fine, they wavered.

“The answer is, we don’t know. These are case specific,” said Jon Cody, a legal adviser to Powell. “I just think in this climate you need to make some decisions.”

It’s this kind of talk that wants me to shout “fuck” from the rooftops, and to rename my company “Reinvented Fuck Inc.”

My familiars will tell you that I’m not prone to swearing at the drop of a hat — to the point that when I do, people take notice. But I can’t believe that people would waste energy and resources on debating the merits of certain words appearing, or not appearing, on the airwaves. Maybe this is important in some Venutian bizarro futureworld when we have nothing else to worry about. Actually, probably not even then.

I’m all for preventing for keeping people from killing each other, for making the air and water clean, and for keeping the buses running on time. Otherwise, I’d rather be free to say whatever I want, whenever I want, and to use my own intelligent discretion to figure out what, when, where.

At the risk of offending my gentle-minded readers, I will relate an observation that I just had here at the [newly WiFi-equipped] Cedar’s Restaurant: it’s very difficult to eat a chicken shawarma without, at some point in the exercise, appearing to be holding a penis in your hand (either your own, or anothers’, as your preferences dictate).

They do make an amazing chicken shawarma here, by the way, which in almost every other way is totally un-penis-like.

Now please return to your regular pious lives.

Perhaps you have been curious about the cost of the modern looking lobby chairs at the Atlantic Technology Centre? These are Turnstone Guest Sweeper chairs. My contact at Steelcase tells me they list for $352, but are available in bulk for around $199 each.

You would be a rare North American to have not seen at least one interview with Bob Woodward this week, out promoting his book Plan of Attack about how the decision to invade Iraq was made.

I’ve seen full interviews by Charlie Rose and Peter Mansbridge, and snippets of more than half a dozen others.

My initial feeling, and the apparent conventional wisdom, was that Woodward’s book would be bad for Bush because it makes him look like a religious zealot and a bad leader who went to war on a conviction-based whim.

You would think that Americans would see this as a “smoking gun.”

But, after some reflection, I don’t think they will. And I’ve come to think that Bush, or at least Bush’s minders, have scored a brilliant public relations coup, with Woodward as the star.

Here’s why.

Woodward has the best credentials in North America as a reporter; I think most people consider him as unimpeachable as Walter Cronkite.

While much of what Woodward reveals in his book makes it look, to the informed eye, like Bush is an idiot, none of this will come as a real revelation to his critics: they already knew he was an idiot, and this only confirms what they thought.

The power in Woodward’s book is what it doesn’t reveal about the war plan. While Woodward details the personal intrigue, the lack of consultation, how Powell was left out, or at least ignored, and so on, the broad strokes of what he reports are in sync with what the Administration paints.

In other words, Bush gave uncommon access to the toughest reporter in Washington, and the result was some tough reporting about process.

It’s as if a bank robber hired Superman to review the process that led up to robbing the bank; Superman reports that things were chaotic. Full stop.

This is good for Bush because, in the end, it comes off looking like a vindication, not a condemnation. And even Woodward’s critique of the process distracts from the war itself, which is good for Bush (the chat shows are filling with debates over when Bush briefed Bandar; nobody’s talking dead bodies these days).

Of course this is good for Woodward too: on one hand he looks like a tough reporter, dragging Bush through the mud; on the other hand, he looks like a tough reporter who showed that the “smoking gun” amounted to some procedural jealousy.

For the last 60 minutes, I’ve been sitting here in the lobby of the Atlantic Technology Centre, the longest time I’ve spent in this building. Over the weekend, Catherine and I attended the [surprisingly excellent] stand-up comedy evening at the new Student Centre at the University of PEI.

Both spaces suffer from what I will call “multipurposeness.” Their designers were obviously charged with designed spaces that could be used for innumerable functions. Indeed John Hughes, Manager of the Technology Centre, when he took me through on a tour last year, was very proud of the fact that walls could move, cables could be re-routed, and spaces completely transformed very easily.

Here in the lobby of the Technology Centre, the aesthetic is “change” — the chairs have casters, the furniture moves around, the partitions are portable, the giant plasma screens can swing around. About the only thing that can’t move easily is the giant Pepsi machines.

Up in the Student Centre, the aesthetic is “washable with a fire hose.” Everything is made of concrete and steel; the doors to the performance hall cum cafeteria are garage style. Although The Wave, the pub inside the space, achieves some degree of intimacy, even in that space there is a sense that it could be converted to a electoral polling station or a blood donor clinic or a primary school classroom with the flick of a couple of switches.

I fear that what we gain in flexibility in these spaces, we lose much more in the lack of a “sense of place.” Both spaces could exist anywhere in North America. Neither responds to or is related in any way to its environment. Neither feels comfortable, nor unique, nor inviting.

Walk into Province House, arguably the greatest building in Charlottetown, and you know immediately where you are. The space oozes Charlottetown, and indeed the building appears to grow right out of the earth that surrounds it. The interior spaces are quirky and purpose-built. Although you can hold a dance in the legislative chambers (obviously), you’ve be hard-pressed to build a bowling alley or accommodate a storage area for airplane parts.

I’ve no argument with the architects or designers of these modern spaces, for quite clearly they accomplished the task they were given. And there are obviously benefits to flexibility (especially when this whole IT things implodes and this building needs to become a cattle processing station, or a fallout shelter, or, more likely, another generic office building).

But by achieving the ultimate in flexibility, they have also achieved the ultimate in genericness. They can be used for any purpose, and thus they speak to no purpose. Sitting here I could be anywhere. And as a result, I am nowhere.

The last multipurpose craze I lived through was in the late 1960s and early 1970s when there was a school building boom in Ontario. Almost all of these schools, partly under the spell of the “tear down the walls” message of the Hall-Dennis Report, incorporated “flexible” spaces. My grade 7 classroom had dividers down the middle, and could open up to the grade 8 classroom to become one big room. Libraries gave way to general purpose “resource centres.” Cafeterias and gymnasiums became “cafeteriums” or “gymneteria.”

The effect was the same: going to school inside those modern contraptions, especially contrasted to the 100-year-old schools that I attended before and after them, felt like being nowhere.

Being nowhere isn’t a pretty place to be. Not then, not now.

As I type this, I’m online from the Atlantic Technology Centre, using the Aliant “free” WiFi connection that has been much-touted by the company (approximately 3 years after the rest of the world “got” WiFi, mind you).

Others have reported problems accessing the WiFi here, and that may be because it’s only “free” in the sense that you don’t have to pay money, not in the sense that you don’t have to chant special Aliant legal voodoo to get online.

If you’re having problems, simply point your web browser at any old website; you’ll get auto-redirected to the Aliant WiFi sign-in page (geek note: you’ll be talking to a Apache/1.3.28 server running on Solaris 8), where you have to enter your name, email address, password, and agree to a lengthy set of terms an conditions that covers everything from agreeing not to send spam to agreeing not to check your email every 5 minutes, 24 hours a day.

Once you jump through this hoop, you’ll have “free” access to the Internet as you might expect.

As I type this, however, a chap who works in the building, who has a Compaq computer, reports that he’s been here a month and has only been able to get access to the WiFi once, and after that he’s never been able to do it again. Interestingly, his solution to this quandry has been to go across the street to Cedars Restaurant and use their free WiFi. The Internet always routes around problems!

By the way, if you live in the block bounded by Prince, Richmond, Hensley and Grafton, you can probably pick up the free WiFi beaming out of our back window at 100 Prince St. We’ve moved the WiFi access point to the back of the house, so reception will be better inside the block than outside. No sign-in or acceptance of terms and conditions required.

Here’s a message I sent earlier this week to the customer service department at JetBlue:

I had a wonderful flight from Denver to Boston yesterday, and have no complaints.

However I did notice that on the default in-flight display on the seat-backs that shows the plane’s position, the heading in the top-left corner of the screen when on the ground in Denver is “SOUTHWEST” (because the map is showing the southwest corner of the U.S.).

In my late-night bleariness, I thought for a second I was on the wrong airline. In any case, it is perhaps an unintended advertisement for your competition!

Here’s the response I received this morning:

Thank you for your email regarding your recent nightmare while on JetBlue! Sorry for the scare, we always want you to have blue and tranquil dreams while sleeping in our beautiful planes! Rest assured we would never advertise for a competitor!

We look forward to seeing you on another JetBlue flight soon, until then have sweet blue dreams!

No worries!

The door (or not the door) at the Longevity Café, Santa Fe, New Mexico. They make a mean “mind demuddler” herbal cocktail, have WiFi, and have created a great place to hang out.

Sign posted inside the men’s washroom at the Sonic Drive-in, Gallup, New Mexico.

In light of recent “JetBlue is just another airline” backlash in the blogosphere, here are my impressions of a recent JetBlue flight from Denver to Boston.

First, the television, which JetBlue uses as a big selling point, wasn’t a big deal for me because my flight left at midnight and arrived at 5:30 a.m., so I tried to sleep for most of the flight. I did catch an episode of Jamie’s Kitchen on the Food Network, which was nice. The quality of the DirectTV signal wasn’t very good on take-off or landing; there’s a blurb about this before the service starts that is relatively honest about this limitation; mid-flight, however, it was crystal clear. Another limitation of the television service, at least on overnight flights, is that a majority of the 24 channels switch to playing infomercials at some point, so the content selection when I woke up around 5:00 a.m. was pretty poor.

Perhaps the biggest difference between JetBlue and other airlines (like Air Canada and America West, which I flew earlier in my trip), was the quality of the customer service. From check-in through boarding, to an introduction to the flight from the captain out in the cabin before we took off, JetBlue staff were universally helpful, witty, and honest.

Check-in took about 15 seconds. I handed my passport to the person at the desk, she tapped a couple of keys and handed me my boarding pass. I have never understood why it takes Air Canada check-in staff enough typing to compose a small essay just to give me my boarding pass; I guess JetBlue never understood this either.

Denver International Airport is somewhat confusing if you’re used to other airports: check-in is in one building, boarding is in a series of concourses that are reached, after going through a central security checkpoint, by an underground train system. This isn’t explained very well anywhere, and the system assumes that everyone knows what the word “concourse” means, which I didn’t. After I figured out the system, however, everything flowed well. Of course it’s easy to run an airport at 11:00 p.m. when there are only 2 or 3 flights left to go out.

Boarding the plane was low-key and well conducted. A gate agent with a sense of humour made a lot of helpful announcements, well in advance of boarding, about how things would proceed. Advance boarding was offered not only to “passengers with small children” but also to “anyone else who wants a little more time to get to the gate.” That was a nice touch.

Once on board, I found the in-flight crew equally charming. When flying Air Canada, especially in recent years, the flight attendants act like school principals, guarding the plane from the passengers and trying to keep everyone in line. In contrast, the JetBlue crew actually appeared to care about whether passengers were comfortable. In the end, this is simply a matter of attitude, and the practical effects aren’t great. But flying is stressful, and every little bit of JetBlue friendliness is amplified just as much as every bit of Air Canada surliness.

About 10 minutes before take-off, the captain came out into the cabin and introduced himself, gave a brief overview of the flight, assured us he was going to keep the cabin warm, and would stay off the PA, so that we could sleep, and entertained any questions. He was dressed in a leather jacket, and looked more like a steely bush pilot than a doctor with wings. I liked that.

We left on time.

Once in the air, the in-flight service was freed from the ungainly cart: flight attendants came by with an order pad, asked you what you wanted, and came back later with your drink on a tray. Again, it was a small thing, but the effect was to make cart-ridden airplanes appear dinosaur like.

True to his word, the captain kept the cabin warm, and stayed off the PA until 10 minutes before landing. I had three seats to myself, so I was able to stretch out and get some sleep. The leather seats weren’t as much of a big deal for me as they would have been if I had been sitting for the entire flight, but they seemed comfortable.

We arrived on time.

JetBlue arrives at Terminal E at Logan, which isn’t exactly a temple of modernity (not that anywhere at Logan is), and this means a hike to another terminal if transferring to another airline.

While it shouldn’t be revolutionary to receive good service, to leave and arrive on time, and for small nice touches to loom so large in importance, in today’s airspace, it is. Flying Air Canada feels like flying a Greyhound Bus staffed by unhappy prison convicts. JetBlue feels, ironically, like flying did 25 years ago, albeit with better aesthetics, and less oppulence.

Jared says “Just because your doctor’s office has cable TV in the waiting room doesn’t mean that getting a colon screening has actually become something fun to do.” And he’s right. But it helps. And so does having a doctor that appears to care about your well-being, and executes the procedure with good humour and efficiency. Flying is stressful and, in the end, not a natural thing for humans to do; JetBlue is a good airline because it knows this, and takes a thousand little steps to mitigate it.

By the way, I’m still waiting for David Neeleman to invite me to lunch.